Deep point, beyond most of us, amateurs at life.
Thank you man.

I think we take our lived experiences with us in to whatever story we experience.

Losing someone you deeply love, moreso if you are in love with them and they with you, in a way that is brutal and deeply painful while you can do absolutely nothing about it...

It does one of two things to you. Either it breaks you and you feel a failure or it fills you with a fury so encompassing that there is nothing left. It drives you beyond physical and mental exhaustion, pushes you beyond physical pain, and makes even the sweetest moments feel hollow and taste like ash. The latter is what drives Ellie and I empathize with her to a strong degree. Where my empathy stops is when Dina begs her to stay and Ellie leaves anyway. I understand it but it was the wrong choice.

Abby only looks after Lev out of guilt, at least initially. If they hadn't cut her down, and she had met Yara and Lev under different circumstances, would she have acted the same? Made the same choices? I don't necessarily think so.

At any rate, this has been a fun discussion, WannaLog. Thank you for it.

** Spoilers **

People are complex, and love even if a momentary crush, is unpredictable for anyone.
If one didn't live through that, then one may not know his/her limits.

Abby defers killing her nemesis (and at a second time) for the love of an adopted child.
Ellie stops at realizing she is clueless, not before, not even for her "true" love and her baby.

But maybe you are right in many points, is all subjective.

Note:
Hated playing Abby for a long time till I came to respect her motivations and value her.
Finished playing Ellie feeling distanced and really not caring whatever happened to her.

I don't think there are any "good" people in that entire series except for probably Dina and Jesse. Maybe Mel at the end.

I did not care about Lev at all. In fact, Lev felt more like a shoehorned tokenization than an actual character. That comes from my understanding of cults. Something I started researching deeply when the Waco siege happened here in Texas. It is extremely unlikely that in a cult like the Seraphites that Lev would exist. The character of Lev is very much a modern sociopolitical statement that runs contrary to pretty much everything we know about behavior and thought manipulation as well as reinforcement in cults. Members are explicitly canalized to not think for themselves and to absolutely not question. Could a character like Lev have existed in the WLF or Fireflies? Certainly. I mean trans folk would exist in a post-apocalyptic setting since they've always existed in humanity. It's the setup for Lev that makes the character hollow and a gesture more than as an actual character. In fact, Lev doesn't really have much to say outside of his conflict with his gender identity and the cult. Which is why, in my mind, Lev is a token character meant as a statement more than as an actual part of the story. It was lame and ham-handed.

I agree with what Mel told Abby to her face, she's a piece of shit. Fucks Own (and that was one of the most cringe sex scenes I have ever seen in a game) even though she knows Mel is pregnant by Owen. You said Ellie is a psycho but Abby is no better. She consistently makes decisions that put everyone around her in actual, mortal danger. She decides to not just kill Joel but torture him and then kill him while Ellie watches. Granted, there was some torture before Ellie showed up, but non-psychos generally don't continue doing so in the presence of a child. Abby is blinded by revenge and it is her actions which cause Ellie's future actions.

I don't think Joel's choice was misguided at all. At no point did the Fireflies tell him before the operation that it would kill Ellie. It wasn't until after she had been wheeled away that he is told. Since it is clear he sees Ellie as a daughter and, he was lied to by omission by the Fireflies, I can fully understand his choice to go rescue Ellie. Hell, I would have done the same thing. Cure or not, you don't get it under false pretenses.

Ellie is too broken at the end of Part II to go after the Fireflies or Abby. After the battle on the beach with Abby, she's done. She knows she's done. There is nothing left within her to go on with. The game lightly touches on it during the brief phase of happiness she has on the farm with Dina but Ellie has absolutely terrible PTSD. Now missing two of her fingers, she also has to know she isn't combat effective. You can't manifest a will to fight when you're so broken inside and so affected by panic that it cripples you (see the scene in the barn with the sheep). I don't think Ellie herself cares about the cure at the end of the game anymore. She's just...done. I think the most likely scenario for Ellie as setup at the end of Part II is for her to do an Irish goodbye and just disappear.

So what would Abby do in a Part III? Join up with the Fireflies, go back to the same old routine of killing, scavenging, and survival? Everyone she knows is dead, largely due to her own fault. She's a story dead end at this point.

** Spoilers, go away ! **

Good riddance ?
I love Lev and Abby, for me they are way better people than psycho Ellie as they prove time and again leaving her alive to no avail but for the final meeting.

Ellie has no problem in putting her love (?) Dina's life in danger multiple times and then in abandoning her.

Joel choice was misguided and Tommy lost himself turning into a rabid dog caring for no one and nothing but vengeance after getting disabled.

The obvious target of the saga (all along) will be for Ellie to find the Fireflies+Abby+a new surgeon, and sacrifice her life for humanity revalidating her life and giving some meaning to all the carnage.

WannaLogAlready wrote on Apr 14, 2025, 00:55:
Pity they aren't doing a third game.

This is not a spoiler free comment, so people can skip on ahead.

Where would they go with the story? Lev and Abby are off somewhere else and good riddance to bad rubbish. Ellie is a PTSD riddled wreck of a human being who, with missing fingers, is no longer combat effective. She's lost Dina and JJ because of her selfish choices despite everything Dina did for her, Joel is dead, and Tommy doesn't give a shit about her any longer. It's clear she felt she never really fit in to the community at Jackson so it doesn't seem logical she would go back there. That story is over and done.

I can see a new story with a new cast of characters somewhere else but the story of survival and hardship has been pretty well covered in the first two games. It would have to go a completely different direction or otherwise it would just be recovering old, well-trodden ground.

Never saw the show.
But just finished The Last Of Us Part II: what an absolutely terrific game.

Not for the appreciation of the proudly immature, of course.
Pity they aren't doing a third game.